Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence Editor and a world-renowned expert on global security and terrorism issues. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books. His new book, Churchill's First War: Young Winston and the fight against the Taliban, is published by Macmillan in London and Thomas Dunne Books in New York. He appears regularly on radio and television in Britain and America.

Steven Sotloff murder: don't negotiate with terrorists – just take them out

Britain should join America and begin air strikes on Isil. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Heartening news from this morning's Cobra meeting on the deteriorating hostage crisis in Iraq, with the Government reported to be giving serious consideration to actually doing something to prevent further atrocities being committed against Western hostages.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond emerged from the meeting to declare that the Government is to "look at every possible option" to try to retrieve the British hostage whose life has been threatened by Islamist terrorists, who have warned that he is next on their "kill list" following the brutal murder of a second American hostage, Steven Sotloff.

It is tempting to ask what has taken the Government so long to come to this groundbreaking decision. After all, it is not as though the terror threat from Islamic State fanatics operating in Iraq and Syria is anything new.

But after all the Government's vacillations over whether to bomb the Assad regime, or the rebels it is fighting, I can detect the first tentative signs of something approaching a policy emerging within the corridors of Whitehall. It has taken the prospect of a British hostage being murdered to galvanise it into action, but it now seems the Coalition grasps the seriousness of the situation it has allowed to develop in Syria and Iraq, and is finally prepared to do something about it.

If this is the case, then they need to face up to a few basic facts.

First, ministers on both sides of the Coalition must abandon their naive support for the so-called Arab Spring once and for all. Democracy is an alien concept for most Arab states, and the Government's ill-considered support for regime change simply for the sake of it has – as I have warned from the outset – helped to create this mess. Secondly, we must accept that the Islamist fanatics who are carrying out these atrocities are nothing more than terrorists, and should be treated as such. We must stick to our principles of not negotiating with terrorists – no matter how great the threat – and do everything in our power to destroy them.

Let them feel the full force of our revulsion at their conduct, and make sure they are never in again in a position to challenge the fundamental tenets of civilised conduct.